How To Grow Spiritually — Apostle Joshua Selman

Many believers are of the view that reading the Bible, praying long prayers, and having days of fasting are what make for spiritual growth. However, while these are very important, Nigerian Apostle, Joshua Selman, explained that the first key — and the most important aspect of spiritual growth is ‘Encounter’.

“If you hunger and thirst for God you will find Him. This is the essence of finding God — not Bible reading, not fasting, not praying — but seeking God because you are hungry and thirsty for Him,” Apostle Selman, who is the founder of the Eternity Network International (ENI), well-known for its ministry of Koinonia in Abuja, Nigeria said. “Everyone in the Bible who found God searched for Him diligently. Not a casual pastoral search, not an academic search, not a businessman search. But a diligent earnest search.”

“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13 KJV)

The Apostle explained that if you must remain in the faith you need to encounter God. An encounter that is higher than business. An encounter that is higher than money. An encounter that is higher than ministry — or anything that you could ask God for.

“If you don’t have an encounter I promise you — the business of ministry will make you grow still,” he said.

He noted that to get this encounter one’s hunger and thirst as to be on par with what King David described in Psalm 42:1

“As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God.” (NKJV)

What is an Encounter?

According to the Oxford dictionary, an encounter is an unexpected or casual meeting with someone or something. In this case with God Himself.

In explaining an encounter, Apostle Selman said it is a place of complete intimacy with God. A place of pruning, a place where your all is before Him, a place where you are desperate for God and where He comes and washes you.

“If you never have an encounter you will never grow spiritually,” he reiterated.

He noted that the appearance of the gifts in your life is not necessarily proof of spiritual growth. Rather, you have to dig your well and cultivate a healthy spiritual life. In fact, not even impartation substitutes for encounters.

“God does not judge you based on the gift of your office. You can have impartation of grace that allows you to function in your gifts,” he told the congregation. “But you are judged based on how much you seek Him. Seekers of His presence.”

The starting point of your spiritual life is to trust God for that hunger that will last your lifetime.

People have to be Hungry for God to have an Encounter with Him

The Cost Dimension

If you truly love God it will cost you! Whatever God gives you, you should be able to give it all back to Him. Your home, family, ministry, anointing — everything!

“When you go to pray make Him Lord of your prayer. Approach God as one who is totally dependent on Him,” the Apostle said. “My heart belongs to you. My life belongs to you. There is a meeting place where you should meet God, a place where you are desperate for God. God says ‘you shall seek me and only find me when you seek me with all of your heart’. Many of you feel that the power of prayer is in the dissipation of energy. No! That is not how spiritual things work.”

He stressed the need for believers to get to the place of encounters, where it is just you and God alone.

“That is encounter! Lock yourself away to pray. But when you do, DO NOT ask for anything — just to be intimate with God. Seek Him just to find Him. Not to find what He can do for you,” he said.  “Don’t use God. Allow God to use you. God is not a joke! If at any time you find yourself using God, just know that you and the anointing are far!”

He encouraged people to find their own secret place with God, because when you see people that dwell in the ‘secret place’ there is an aura that they carry.

He reminded people of Anna, a prophet mentioned in  Luke 2:36-38 who stayed in the temple day and night in the presence of the Lord for 60 years. She was 24 when she started.

He also challenged preachers that they should not be preaching unless they have had an encounter from the secret place.

“The word is like a double-edged sword, that sword enters the heart of men — you cannot fake it,” he said. “We are at risk of a generation that does not know how to seek God. We know how to preach. We know how to sing. We know how to produce albums. We know how to write books. But to seek His face, we don’t know how.

“We should be at a place where we are fasting not to seek power, but we are saying ‘Lord give me more of you. Reveal yourself to me’. Ask God to reveal Himself to you. What happens in the church now is just a galore of talents. It’s about what we know and who we are. That’s why we have lost the power in the body of Christ. You need to rededicate your life to Christ.

There is a Call to Rededicate Your Life to Christ.

Walking With God Pays!

And while many seek to walk with God, the price for doing this walk and doing it effectively is death!

“The price of walking with God is DEATH!” The Apostle said strongly. “The price of an encounter is DEATH! Not morning devotions. Not eight hours of prayer! Giving eight hours of your time will not give Him all of you. You need to give Him EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! You want to see the glory of God in your lives? You want to see the glory of God in your meetings? You can fast dry for 90 days and you will not see anything! He requires all of you!

“One of the most deceptive things happening in the body of Christ now is the craving for impartation. So people run around to different men of God who when they touch them they can say ‘I got impartation from so and so’. Then they lie to themselves that they are working in these anointings. The Bible says many are called but few are chosen. No man can give you impartation. Impartation is only useful when you have set a foundation.”

He said instead of seeking God through the night, people are now snoring their way until morning — these include leaders, pastors, and preachers.

Therefore, believers should be careful who they follow because who you follow matters.

There is a path that seemth right to a man, but the end thereof is destruction (Proverb 14:12).

“You show that you are a shepherd by your hunger for God. People follow your hunger — not your talk! When you talk about the Holy Spirit you have to prove it by your own life,” he advised. “John Wesley says, ‘set yourself on fire and the world will come and watch you burn’. The goal is not to go out and call people to your ministry, the key is to keep burning. That is where the eagle will come.

“Let us return to the secret place. Learn to turn off your phone and shut out all the distractions. Make it just a time for you and God. Not asking for anything but seeking Him out of hunger and thirst. A time when you just worship God. When you leave the secret place you should leave with the presence of God. You don’t fake presence. When you carry the presence of God it is palpable. You can make your house a habitation of angels and all kinds of things can happen there. So you don’t just become spiritual when you fast. The key to knowing God is death — not prayer, not Bible study. It’s the sacrifice of your all until you die. The word of God now becomes alive in you. Until you die, the prayer now releases power through you.”

He reminded people of Jesus’ life. Where the way to the throne was the cross.

“You cannot bypass the cross and just put a crown on your head and say ‘I have gotten to the throne’.”

In fact, there are times when God has to constrain us in order to get us to where He wants us.

‘There are some of us the orchestrations in our lives are not caused by demons,” he said. “They are the constraints that God will subject you to, to cause you to know Him. ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death’. Until I walk there I never knew that I can fear no evil. We live in a generation that binds everything. We don’t have the discernment to know if it is of God, to know whether it is a furnace that God is using to refine us. Because we are bankrupt spiritually. Anything we see that is not favorably to yourself you cast it. And sometimes you cast the very realm which power will come from. Sometimes it is in pain that we know something about God. We don’t have experiences that make us know God. We are full of theories. There are no scars in us that are testaments of encounters.”

However, he said, we do not know God by theory.

“People are in a rush to go into ministry. For some of us when God called us it took His grace to push us because we felt so unqualified within ourselves. We knew it wasn’t the issue of intellect.  But if you pray for someone and nothing happens — it is not a matter of ego — but you may not see that person for days. He is gone to seek God because he is saying ‘Lord there’s got to be more. There must be more’. Now you go to a service and 99 people come for healing and none of them got healed but you say ‘it was a good service because we had a good turnout’. That is not the way it is supposed to be.”

These are the reasons he noted why it is so very important to spend time with God, to spend time seeking God and getting into that intimate relationship that makes you know for sure that whatever you do is about God and for God.

“Do you have time for God? Show me the book where you record His voice. Show me the encounters. Show me the personal vigils that you do,” he challenged.

The Apostle said we should not be afraid to go before God and tell Him, ‘Father, anything in my life that has risen above you, I bring it under the feet of Jesus now!’.

“The Price of Walking With God is DEATH!”

“It is this lack of ‘the secret place’ that makes us begin to lose character.  You were never an angry person, but now everything begins to move you — men, women, money, power, everything. There are many people who are in the motion but the wine has finished,” he declared. “Nobody corrupts himself. It starts somewhere. Everybody is corrupted by the environment.  Get rid of the bad companies that only corrupt you. The same way I make friends is the same way I will wave goodbye to them. Once their lives become pungent to my destiny — I wave them goodbye, and I wave it honestly. No strings attached, and no heart feelings.

“There are people you will love with all your heart but wave them goodbye — they can never be your friends! God is the only friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Some people when you get in trouble they will never come and say ‘I am standing with you’. Let me tell you this, you need to delete some people from your phone. You are there praying and spending time with God and they come knocking at your door. And you get up and say ‘God my friend is here’. And God said ‘what about me?’ ”

He advised that it is time for us to love this God with all of our hearts and we will see that we will grow like an edifice.

“You will be sitting down and God will bring revelations that you didn’t open your Bible to search for. Because hunger attracts that dimension of Him.

But he warned, after you have had your encounter and God is pouring into your life, be careful of pride. Because pride can destroy you.

“Sometimes I write everything God has achieved through me, I drop it on the ground and I start speaking over them one by one. I say ‘God and His purposes are above you’. ‘Thank God for this anointing, but God and His purposes are above you’. I walk and I stand before the mirror and I say ‘Joshua Selman, you remain a servant of God. No pride!’. Lock yourself away and confess everything before God. Confess what people said, confess how it made you feel. Tell Him if there is pride in you to work on it and take it away. If the praises got to you — confess it to God. Return all the glory to Him. You can be there preaching and bragging like a fool until the day pride brings you down. God does not bring you down in one day. God is too merciful to bring you down in one day. It is a lack of visiting the secret place that causes you to fall. People keep going down and one day it becomes clear that you have left God alone.”

 

Prayer of Rededication and Surrender

“Lord, may the day never come when (call your name here) will be full of self and never give you right of way. Lord, I rededicate my life, I rededicate my heart. I rededicate my ministry. I rededicate EVERYTHING to you. Lord, break my pride. If there is anything that I have achieved that is causing pride — take it away. Take away the lust, take away the prayerlessness, wordlessness, slumber… Remove every idol that may be in my life — even those I am unaware of — bitterness, jealousy, envy backbiting… Take all of me, Lord! You have my everything! All of me Lord. Anything that will take the place of God in my life may it not come! Father keep me in your presence. That is my place of safety. That is my place of shelter. Keep me in your presence.”